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Restless Native: Tom Lappin: It only takes a bang to win a Nobel prize

The late, great satirist Peter Cook once mused on Elizabeth’s Taylor’s belief that her famed propensity to pile on the pounds was directly attributable to her glands. “Yes, poor woman,” Cook scoffed. “She’s sitting there in her hotel when her glands pick up the telephone and order a tray of eclairs and a bottle of Courvoisier. ‘No!’ screams Miss Taylor, but it’s too late. Five minutes later, there’s a knock on the door, the glands wrench her aside and open it — those damned glands of hers.”

Weirdly implausible explanations for aberrant behaviour also came to mind this week on hearing the confessions of one Alan McIlwraith. Cast your mind back to April and you should recall the fellow: “Captain Sir” Alan McIlwraith, perhaps Britain’s greatest military hero since the days of Flashman. Sandhurst graduate, knight, holder of the DSO and adviser to General Wesley Clark, Nato’s former supreme allied commander,